Would you get into trouble for this?

I'd smash them. IF it ended up at court I don't see someone being convicted. A broken window over two lives?

I'm restraint trained (work with sen children) and we are always told a broken arm etc is better than a child getting run over or falling out of a window etc

Yes I’d smash it after 4 hours. Poor kids must have been terrified

Ridiculous.

Wiki suggests c.38 children die annually in the US from being left in cars, for instance — more likely to happen in hotter countries. The Tipperary case I mentioned happened on the hottest day of the year, but for obvious reasons fatalities from this are far less common in Ireland.

People do it not infrequently. There have been lots of cases where a parent has forgotten to drop the child at childcare, and just gone into work on automatic pilot. As a pp said there was one where a 7-month old baby died of heatstroke in Tipperary in 2017, but there have also been others reported, and it’s not that rare. It’s a recognised phenomenon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgotten_baby_syndrome

It's more than possible, there are documented cases of it happening several times a year all around the world, including children dying from it. It's a known problem that lots of organisations try to develop safeguards against.

For future reference. No need to smash a window if your by a bunch of shops.

Roll of gaffa tape, apply multiple long strips firmly to the window, top to halfway down with a 'tail' end you can hold onto at the bottom.

Once firmly applied pull firmly applying the pressure downwards to force the window down into the door.

Bob's your uncle.

If you're in a remote area, smashing might be needed. Always handy to have one of these on your keys anyway. Car window smasher

Are you joking? "Forgot" their kids were in the car? Who the fuck does that for 4 hours!?

Hmmm where did I leave those very small people that can't protect themselves, who knows!?

Not always - I was with DH in his car, we stopped so he could pop into the local Co-Op, after a set period of time the car auto-locks all the doors even if there's someone inside. I moved, the alarm went off and I could not open the passenger door from the inside.

It's quite possible the parent forgot they were in the car when they parked if they were very quiet

No it's not. It's not possible in the slightest.

Parent relelbered their phone id bet while forgetting the kids

No, people don't forget!

I feel like people on the internet always say they would, but these people never happen to be at the scene at the time. We had a similar happen in my town, younger child less amount of time , in a supermarket carpark. No one smashed the window, they waited by it until the parent came back. Plastered pictures over FB of the car, plenty of comments saying if they were there they would have smashed the window, but in a busy supermarket, on a Saturday with a big crowd at this time, no one did.

Poor little things. Not remotely comparable but I once broke a window to get a dog out of a hot car and, while I had to do a lot of explaining and paperwork I didn't get in trouble.

I doubt you would get into trouble, but my concern would initially be that me breaking a window could scare them more than the police doing it, as I would be messy and uncontrolled as I don't know the best way.
However I wouldn't have waited an hour.

What would be the point of that. If that was the case you'd phone the fire service. Making up that kind of story isn't going to get a faster police response

Please do. If cops didn't attend that call then you can be 100% sure there genuinely were none available. Probably several crews sitting in a&e with MH patients.

I cant begin to tell you how often I get a call which urgently needs attendance and there's genuinely absolutely noone available.

The constant cut backs are what's responsible for the shocking drop in response cops. Its not that they don't care or cba it's that they're at breaking point with the calls they're expected to deal with

The powers that be don't care. So please do write to your MP or the Chief Constable or anyone else who might be able to do something

I wouldn't give a toss about the damage to the car, but I'd be very worried about the children being injured in the process of the window being broken, so wouldn't do it unless they were at risk of dying from extreme temperatures. I'd obviously stay out and try to keep them calm, though.

Write to the chief constable. That is disgraceful. You could have called the fire brigade.

If the police were too swamped to attend the scene wouldn't they still be able to quickly trace the car owner and make a call? It's most likely someone forgot to drop them off or had a medical emergency themselves. They could have been really nearby and someone would have arrived with keys in minutes. That would be the ideal solution.

Just to add you wouldn’t have got in to trouble smashing the window to prevent harm.

They probably didn’t have an officer to attend, sadly I’m not even joking or making an excuse, in our force we often have 3 officers left after hospital watch, high risk missing persons, arrests and custody watch, this is to cover hundreds of square miles inc one city and around 12 surrounding villages, one car accident where traffic control in needed and that’s it, no officers!

It’ll get worse, most forces have frozen recruitment because of Gov funding cuts so leaving/retiring officers won’t be replaced.

It’s quite frankly shit, unacceptable and people need to know how bad it is.

Many officers are parents and would be just as angry when if the call was put out over the radios, there is also a chance they didn’t even know if the dispatcher was already aware all officers were allocated it might not have even reached the response teams.

I would lose a lot of respect for anyone that stops to think deeply about themselves in an emergency situation. It sounds like something went very wrong that day

I accept that emergencies can happen at any time, but who in their right mind would leave children of that age alone in a car for any time to start with?

I think I would have called the police back and said there was a strong smell of petrol coming from the car and I was worried about the possibility of a passer-by discarding a cigarette end.

I would have smashed the window or shouted "does anyone know how the locks work on this car" (I know nothing about cars) incase someone knows a trick to open the doors.
I would have called the fire brigade first rather than the police or maybe a local mechanic who might have been able to dash down and get the kids out.
Poor kids.